Eckes Goes Wire-to-Wire for Dominant Nashville Victory - Speedway Digest

Christian Eckes stole the show at Nashville Superspeedway on Friday night with a dominant performance and led wire-to-wire for his third victory of the season. The driver of the No. 19 Adaptive One Calipers Chevrolet Silverado RST led all 150 laps to tighten his grasp on the NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series points lead and became the first driver since 2012 to lead every lap in a single race. Eckes fended off all challengers throughout the night and made a clean sweep of the evening to capture the signature Gibson guitar and claim his first victory in “Music City”. Eckes’ perfect night earned him the maximum 60 points as he now holds a 40-point advantage in the championship standings.

Friday afternoon’s practice and qualifying sessions were a precursor of what was to come as Eckes posted the second-quickest lap in practice and timed in third in qualifying. He extended his streak of races led to 13 by instantly grabbing the lead in Turn 1 on the opening lap. The launch at the drop of the green flag allowed Eckes to get a run on the pole sitter in the first corner to acquire the lead. Despite multiple restarts in the first 45 lap stage, Eckes led the entire way to claim his fourth stage win of the season.

Despite leading the first segment, Eckes and crew chief Charles Denike did not rest on their laurels and made a minor air pressure adjustment to the truck on their first pit stop of the evening. A quick four-tire stop by the Adaptive One Calipers crew under the first stage caution preserved the race lead and allowed Eckes to restart as the leader on lap 53. Stage 2 saw more of the same action as Eckes leaped out to a 10-truck length lead. As the segment wore on, Eckes’ balance swung too tight on Nashville’s concrete surface, but still allowed him to sweep the stages by lap 95.

Denike and the MHR team bolted on a second set of fresh tires for Eckes under the second stage caution and aided him with a track bar adjustment to circumvent the tight handling condition. A series of quick cautions slowed the pace in the final segment until the event’s final restart on lap 119. Eckes executed a flawless restart to solidify the lead and was followed by teammate Daniel Dye. Eckes drove away in convincing fashion to a 2.02-second victory over Dye to give MHR the organization’s second one-two finish in its history.

Christian Eckes Quote:

“This truck is our best truck, for sure. It’s won three races. It won at Martinsville earlier this year and Phoenix. It’s good to get back to victory lane. This might have been the best it was and it was really good at Martinsville. What a day. I’m really proud of all these guys. This was our worst racetrack last year and there’s a lot of stuff in history that made this special. Super proud of everybody. We just got to keep this momentum going.”

MHR PR